Chopping Block

Contents

Hosts

Co-hosts

Broadcast

Synopsis

Rosemary Shrager and John Whaite run a residential cookery school. Four cooking couples are tutored and schooled. They'll see demonstrations, and get outline recipes to follow.

Each day's show has a theme. There might be a baking day, but there will be British day, Retro day, Asian day. The best couple each day win a reward to enjoy that evening in front of the others.

Schrager and Whaite, harsh and sweet teachers.

Each episode of Chopping Block lasts an hour, and it goes out at 3pm. To break up the footage of people cooking, we viewers are treated to Rosemary and John talking about their favourite dishes in the day's category.

An education for the viewer, and an education for the competitors – the idea of a school is that they will learn. And it's clear that the teams do learn, they improve.

Whichever team has improved the least by Wednesday is off the show, and the remaining three couples compete on Friday for £1000. The cash reward is only part of the prize: everyone has had a week with star chefs - and that is worth hundreds in itself.